Climbing in Red Rocks after heavy rain can permanently damage the rock! MORE INFO >>>

The sandstone in Red Rocks is fragile and is very easily damaged when it is wet. Holds rip off and climbs have been and will continue to be permanently damaged due to climbers not respecting this phenomenon. After a heavy storm the rock will remain wet, sometimes for several days. PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB IN RED ROCKS during or after rain. A good rule of thumb is that if the ground near your climb is at all damp (and not powdery dry sand), then do not climb. There are many alternatives (limestone, granite, basalt, and plastic) nearby.

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Description

The route starts in a small cave with a tree about 15 feet up out of the prominent bushy gully, and ends at the top of Jackrabbit Buttress. Two pitches of 5.7 chimney, roof and hand cracks leads to a "zebra striped" slab. A full pitch of up and over left on easy climbing deposits you at a small tree at the base of a nice 5.6 black finger crack that angles up and right. This pitch ends at a chimney beside a large block atop a detached pillar. Behind this pillar is a large bush in a bomb-bay flaring stem that leads up through a really great crack. This pitch ends at a horizontal crack after an exposed traverse right and a nice 5.7 black crack. Three more progressively easier pitches take you to the very top of Jack Rabbit Buttress.

To descend, walk straight back to the Brownstone Wall and down Juniper Canyon back to the base of the climb. This is not a particularly difficult route, but it was one of the funnest days I have ever spent at Red Rocks. The awesome views of Crimson Chrysalis are reason enough to give this route a go.

MysterZ is a route named in honor of Zack Martin who died in a tragic auto roll over on Thanksgiving Day in 2003. Jimmy and I had met Zack on a Vegas trip in 2001 through our mutual friend J.P. Zack had earlier jumped in and surfed an avalanche to dig J.P. out on a trip to Alaska. Heroic and uncommonly modest, Zack was a truly gifted climber who had climbed all over the globe and been the winner of several climbing grants including the Anatolli Boukorev award. Currently there is a climbing grant in his name administered by the American Alpine Club. The goal is to attain an amount of at least $25,000 so that this grant fund can become perpetual. I would strongly urge everyone interested to make a tax free donation to the "Zack Martin Memorial Breaking Barriers Fund". This is a good cause and who knows you may even be able to win this award for one of your climbing adventures.

This is an excellent route! Most of the climbing is is pleasant and relaxed, with an occasional tricky move to make sure you're paying attention. The less experienced leader will find a couple of spots where a large cam might be appreciated.

Larry- Wow I am really honored that you went and did ths little climb. Nice pictures. Looks like a great day! I am glad you liked it. Jimmy and I thought it was a very pleasant adventure. I think it would be a logical link-up route for the Brownstone wall climbs. Well take care and keep climbing. philo ps: Your book is really awesome!

Phil- excellent route. I thought some more and bumped my rating up to 3 stars. This route has something for everyone. For the old hands it is an aesthetic easy day, or a good linkup. For the new leaders it is a good adventure.

Lots of nice climbing on this one, though not much 5.7. As nice as Geronimo. The crux is pitch 1, and it is much harder the bigger you are! The collection of bail slings at the top of pitch one is unsightly.

Pitch 4 and pitch 6 could use wide gear (4-6") unless you are comfortable running it way out on easy (5.5) ground.

Pitch 5 is much easier if you run up the face to the right ... but there is almost no gear out there. The final move up the black crack in nowhere near 5.7.

We saw a herd of at least 30-40 desert bighorn at the base of the Brownstone Wall as we were walking off. What a magical canyon!

Fun and relatively friendly route. It gets a lot of sun and we were really cooking on it. I suggest not entering the squeeze at the top of pitch 1, this looks very unpleasant, especially if you are a big guy like me. I went straight up and out here and quickly got onto the left face (juggy) and out of the big crack.

Pitch 6 may be easy, but there is essentially no pro for the first 50' and the crux. It's a gully that is 6-8" at the bottom, the good news is the angle is only about 45 degrees. The bad news is the flakes you grab and step on are a bit creaky. Anyway it's not hard but the leader can't be afraid to run it out (eventually you can get a #4 Camalot in).

Decent route, but I didn't think it was as "classic" as Olive Oil. The descent is pretty simple and no raps.

Brutus-- the history of this route is lost in the mists. I recall having seen a photo of Tom Kaufman on this general line back in the 70s. Like much of what was done back then, the details and memories have faded. But Phil and Jimmy have their own place among the legends of the era, and their story was meaningful, so it seemed appropriate to let their name take official status.

This would be a very good route for an early leader, as it has relatively easy but varied climbing, comfortable belays, and sucks up gear. The terrain offers hand and fist cracks, chimneys, face climbs, and even some slabby sections if you decide to get out of the cracks on the upper pitches. Also, there are a number of relatively low angle cracks beyond the top of pitch 3 that a relatively new leader could use to practice setting up hanging belays. Most of the rock is pretty good, although there are some chossy areas at the top of pitch 1 and on pitch 5 that you need to look out for.

There are a lot of options for getting past the chimney near the end of pitch 1, which makes that an especially fun pitch. I squeezed through the chimney on black varnished holds and pockets that allowed me to place some protection. My partner climbed the features on the face on the left side of the chimney, which had juggy but chossy holds. The right face also offered a lot of holds, but the protection placements were less evident.

What I would call the third pitch, which climbs a long crack on a corner, is absolutely the bomb! The pitch has terrific holds, continuous gear options, and links up with small but very sweet fist crack coming up the face. We only wished we could do that pitch again and again!

The anchor at the top of pitch 1 is currently a blue 11 or 12 mm rope slung around a rock protrusion. It would be wise to back this up with some cams in the cracks at the back of the belay cave because there appear to be some growing stress fractures in the protrusion.

Make sure you bring your approach shoes with you on the climb, as the walk off is long and somewhat strenuous. The "three more progressively easier pitches" after pitch 5 are on what I would consider to be Class 3 terrain. My partner and I put away our rope and changed into our approach shoes for the fun scramble off when we reached the big yellow blocks at what we would consider to be the top of pitch 5. Cairns leading left will show you the descent route.

If one headed for the obvious black crack above the 3rd class section (not trending left to the "nice finger crack"), they would find that it too goes at 5.7. A bit of slightly fragile face climbing deposits you in a nice finger to hand crack with a little bit of chimneying thrown in for good measure. Continue until you run out of rope with a 60m and build a hanging belay in a nice finger crack (.5, orange and yellow metolius, sm. wire). Run it out off this belay (fragile 5.6 for 25' )to link back with MysterZ. Pretty good.

This route turned out to be a little bigger than we had expected. We were planning to climb it and Black Dagger and be at the airport at 5 pm. It took us until after 11 am (about 4 hours of climbing) to reach the top of the route so we had to skip Black Dagger. Without our time restriction it wouldn't be too bad to link the two routes, but Myster Z wasn't nearly as fast as I'd imagined it to be after reading some of the comments on here. The pitches are long, sustained for the grade, and with a number of significant run outs. Also, it would probably take 30-45 minutes of scrambling to get to the base of Black Dagger from the top of the last pitch of Myster Z.

The first pitch is particularly airy and far and away the best pitch on the route. Grab that lead if you get the chance. If wearing a pack, plan on climbing the jugs on the left of the chimney at the top. You can sling a horn and get a solid stopper in but there's plenty of air under your feet.

The fifth pitch has the only tricky routefinding. If you get to a spot where it looks like you need to pull a 5.9 roof to get out of an alcove go back down 20 feet and go 30 feet to the right to get to the next belay. If I had used the topo on this site instead of the one I had it wouldn't have been an issue (take a glance and you'll see what I mean.)

I didn't see any fixed gear anywhere on the route. A comment above mentions rap stations at the tops of pitches 1 and 2. I didn't see them. Maybe they're gone. Maybe I'm blind.

Did this yesterday as an approach route to the Brownstone Wall. Good route overall but nothing too stimulating. The 1st and 2nd pitch can be linked with a 70m. The 4th pitch was by far my favorite as I felt that I was actually climbing the whole time as opposed to doing low 5th class movement to a 5.6 crux. The 5th pitch is very good as well and the "airy traverse" is quite good. This pitch can be linked into the 6th if you use long runners to reduce rope drag- use a 70m cord. After this some low 5th class moves bring you to scrambling up to the base of Brownstone. Regarding the route description in Handren's book; I think the pitch lengths are a little short on every pitch except the 4th. This is probably the best way to approach Brownstone and would be a great link up to ANY of the routes on that wall.

I thought this was a quality route and a fine memorial to your friend Zack. I did not see any fixed gear on the route. Aside from the final pitch of real climbing (pitch 6 in the topo shown here) the rock quality was good. That pitch was a bit crumbly but easy climbing, but basically no pro until you exited the chimney/wide crack. Nothing really felt 5.7 to me either, the stemming over the bush seemed really casual.

I agree that there are definitely some sections of sparse or no pro and the leader needs to be confident on standard Red Rocks easy fifth class terrain well above their protection as well as stemming wide cracks/chimneys. There is a fair amount of both these styles on this route. I took a 4" cam but would not take anything larger than a 2 next time, with at least doubles of .4-1" and lots of long slings. The route had everything, face climbing, cracks, chimneys, including a great squeeze chimney on the first pitch which was the physical crux, it's tight! The enjoyable climbing combined with a cool topout and a descent that added to the flavor of the route made for a fun day.

We did this in 2009 as an approach to Armatron. The route goes fast and it's no kidding, a three-minute walk from the top of MysterZ to Armatron--so it's a wonderful approach to the right side of the Brownstone wall. And the linkup to Armatron makes for a wonderful day of mostly very moderate climbing (on Armatron there is 1 short pitch of 5.8 and about 20 feet of 5.9). And going to the summit of Juniper is easy and beautiful and the walk-off is utterly obvious and casual. (You go east from the summit and then down around to the south and west and walk right underneath Armatron, so you can leave your packs there, then easy slabs and trail down and out.)

I thought this was a very enjoyable route. I thought that the climbing was consistantly 5.6 with maybe a few moves of 5.7. At times you could get a good distance above your gear and maybe that is why it felt 5.7 in a few areas. I carried a double rack up to a #2 and a single #3/3.5/4. I was glad to have the extra pieces when setting up the stations.